Motorsport lost an accomplished rally co-driver, event organiser, and results service provider on Wednesday 16 September, Hywel Thomas, writes Roger Gale.
Affectionately known by many friends as “Hywel the Mac”, a term that arose from his early garb as a road rally navigator and stuck with him forever, passed away in the early hours after several months of characteristically stoically coping with the effects of cancer.
The highly respect Neath-born rallyman was described in the Port Talbot MC 25th anniversary book as “Wandering Welshman” Hywel Thomas.
He competed purely for personal satisfaction over a remarkable span as a co-driver, his rallying travels taking him to many corners of our planet, with a host of successful drivers, finding his forte as a co-driver and navigator alongside drivers such as Ron Gillard, Norman Harvey, Tony Chappell, John Heppenstall, Alun Rees, Philip Young, John Price and Bob Fowden to name but a few.
He was an early member of Port Talbot Motor Club before work overseas as a computer expert parted him from the club, but made a return some years later.
A winner of the famed Motoring News Nutcracker and Gremlin road events, he was competing nationwide by the late sixties, and had done the “Monte” many times, plus Coupe Des Alpes with Chris Sclater, the Acropolis, Himalayan Rally in India, to name but a few amongst many other great events in many countries.
Perhaps the greatest adventure, the 1970 London – Mexico World Cup Rally with Alun Rees and Washington James, their Hillman finishing fifteenth.
In recent years Hywel developed his Rally Results International service that provided comprehensive results to events from club to International, both in the UK and internationally, a high example in every sense being his service to the Raid de Himalaya that is based in Shimla, an event that earned him lasting regard in India .
A man who readily described himself as ‘pedantic’ Hywel was not always easy to get on with, his approach to his rallying, his results service, and indeed life in general one that can be summed up by his adage ‘good enough is not good enough, it has to be right’ – and indeed it nearly always was !
Bruce McLaren summed up his own life in motorsport by saying ‘it would be a waste of life to do nothing with ones ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone’.
That can and does apply to Hywel the Mac, a co-driver of remarkable talent, with a wide-ranging insight into the sport and its needs, who was always pushing the boundaries of what was possible in his chosen sport. Many will miss him, very few will forget him.
Hywel’s funeral will be tomorrow, Friday 25 September at 1.30 pm at Margam Crematorium, Longland Lane , Margam, Port Talbot SA13 2NR, just off the M4 motorway.
